AUSTIN—Born into slavery, Ohio Taylor was a free black farmer when he died in 1918 and was buried in deep East Texas.

Today, his grave is choked by overgrown weeds and brush and has been all but sealed off to family for the better part of 40 years. Doris Vittatoe feels like her great-grandfather has been sent back into bondage for eternity.

“He still isn’t free,” Vittatoe said Tuesday.

Taylor is buried in Love Cemetery, a small plot in the tiny town of Scottsville, sandwiched between Marshall and the Louisiana border. Archaeologists believe more than 100 blacks were buried there and some graves date to well before the Civil War.

The graveyard also has turned into a flashpoint for advocates trying to gain access to family burial sites and small, overgrown and often forgotten cemeteries across Texas.

Vittatoe and others interesting in cleaning up Love Cemetery are in a dispute with an East Texas timber company they say won’t give them access to the property. The state Funeral Services Commission heard their complaints Tuesday in an emotional hearing as families told of being locked out of Love and places like it.

Snider Industries owns the logging road that provides the best access to Love Cemetery, but has told Vittatoe and others interested in cleaning it up they must be insured for up to $1 million to protect the company from lawsuits.

A telephone message left at Snider headquarters in Marshall was not immediately returned.

“This is a pain you don’t get rid of,” Vittatoe said. “I think they are very cold. They have no compassion for how the Love Cemetery families feel.”

tSimple trespassing laws also prevent families from getting to the grave sites, said Karen Thompson, president of Save Texas Cemeteries.

“The problem is most of these black cemeteries have been neglected far too long. They didn’t have the money to build a big road, erect a big fence and a big sign and form an association,” to protect them over the years, Thompson said.

Love Cemetery descendants had been essentially blocked from Love Cemetery from the 1960s until just a few years ago, according to China Galland, who wrote a book, “Love Cemetery, Unburying the Secret History of Slaves.”